The Trouser People

This text presents a journey through Burma in two respects - a journey through history with Andrew Marshall travelling Burma in the present day but also visting the Burma of the last century. Sir George Scott, an eccentric Victorian adventurer, inspired Marshall to visit Burma. He spent weeks deciphering Scott's diaries and found himself on an oddly obessive quest to rescue this singular man from historical obscurity. Born in 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition, Scott was an imperialist with a fondness for pith helments and football - he introduced the sport to Burma and widened the goalposts of the British Empire in his own peculiar way. The Burmese love the game, Scott noted, because it's just like fighting. All through Burma he was a local legend, he reported for the London Evening Standard on matters royal and military and negotiated jungle paths.